Yasmine
“Getting a prenup is one of the most romantic things you can do before marriage,” Yasmine said, then grinned at the skeptical expressions on the faces of the college students in front of her. All women. Not that she excluded men from her Feminist Finances class, but either they rarely signed up, or it was too difficult for them to get in. Her waitlist was a mile long since she only taught one class per semester at the local community college. The rest of the time, she was running her own investment firm.
“Isn’t that like preparing for the marriage to not work out?” one of the women in the front row asked with a frown that was repeated throughout the classroom. There were only a few college students who hadn’t made a face at her statement.
“Yes and no. A prenup can be a lot more than that. If you go into it thinking you’re only getting it because you’re assuming the marriage will end, then yes, that feels unromantic. But the truth is, a lot of couples go into marriage thinking about love and children and never consider hard financial and legal facts. Financially and legally, a marriage is as serious as a business merger, but we rarely look at it that way.”
Although Yasmine had tried the business merger marriage plan. Let her parents arrange it. Met the guy.
On paper, they were perfect.
But then, he’d fallen for someone else, and Yasmine understood. She’d even released him from their arrangement and helped give them a push together because she was a romantic. And when it came to securing a life partner, emotions mattered as much as the rest of it.
Even if she was better at helping others find their happily-ever-afters than she was herself.
She still encouraged all of them to get prenups, though.
“It’s extremely rare that anyone gets married already planning for what they’ll get at the end of it, but life happens. People sometimes lie. Or don’t talk through the things they should. What happens if you get married and find out that your fiancé was hiding thousands of dollars of debt from you? What happens if they cheat on you? What happens if you start a wildly successful business and they get insecure and jealous and the marriage falls apart, but they’re entitled to half your business because you didn’t have a prenup?” Yasmine raised her hands on either side of her, palms up, as she shrugged, looking around the classroom to see their reactions now.
Good. They were listening.
“That happened to my mom,” one of them in the back said. “She started making more than my dad, and he demanded that she quit her job. It’s not her own business, so he can’t own any of it, but he’s still mad she’s making more than him. He tried to get alimony from her in the divorce settlement.”
“My sister married her high school boyfriend, and he cheated because he wanted to know what it was like to sleep with someone else,” one of the other women offered up.
Yasmine’s phone screen lit up with a text message that she ignored as she listened to her students. Her phone was sitting beside her on her desk, and it was going to stay that way. If someone called her, she’d glance to see who it was and decide whether or not to pick up, but her friends and family all knew her schedule, so they should only call if there was an emergency.
A text was not an emergency.
“One of my cousins started a body care business, and her husband wasn’t working at all, but he still gave her a hard time about how much she was working, even though he was living off her money,” another student said. “She finally left him, but like Miss Yasmine says, they split her business fifty-fifty. She’s trying to start a new one so he can’t profit off her anymore, but it’s hard.”
“It is hard, and my sympathies are with her. If she wants to get a consult anytime, have her reach out to me,” Yasmine said with feeling. Yes, she loved numbers and investments, but what she really loved about her job was getting to help other people. Especially women. She was well aware that these opportunities had not been open to her grandmothers’ or even her mother’s generations when they were growing up.
Anything she could do to help give women a leg up with finances and business, she was there for. Which was why she taught this class at the local community college, as well as doing a volunteer class for a women’s shelter run by her friend Naomi.
There were still a few skeptical expressions in the class, though a lot of them were looking more serious and engaged now.
“It’s not just about divorce, either. Let’s say you have a business you started and an unsupportive spouse. You’re planning to leave them, but then you both get hit by a car and die. Anyone in here have a will?” She looked around and was unsurprised that no one raised their hand. “Who gets the business? Your family? Your spouse’s family?”
“My family should. It’s my business.” One of the young women who still looked skeptical frowned as she answered.
“‘Should’ is not a legal definition. If you do not have a prenup or a will, it’s up to the courts to decide, and they’ll do so according to the legal definition. Your family could be tied up with lawyers and probate for months, if not years, fighting over who gets the business.” Yasmine looked around the room again. Realization was now dawning on everyone’s faces. Good. “Prenups are protection. Now, let’s get deeper into talking about it.”
It was a good class, with a lot of great discussion, and Yasmine felt positively buoyant by the end of it.
“Everyone write at least two pages on what you’d like to see in your prenup for the next class,” she said as they hit the end of their time together. “Next week, we’re talking about how retirement funds work and why you should already be thinking about them.”
She grinned at the chorus of groans. It might be a lot to expect college students to think about retirement, but the sooner they got started, the easier retirement would be for them. While she was a firm believer in the idea that almost any age could start saving and investing for their future, the earlier it happened, the better.
Which she would convince them of next week.
Waving at the chorus of thank-yous from her students, Yasmine quickly packed up her bag and grabbed her phone to check the text message that had come in. It was from Grace, a former client who had become a friend despite the difference in their ages.
Grace
Call me ASAP, please.
Well, that was concerning. Yasmine quickly hit the call button and put the phone to her ear as she made her way out of the classroom. Grace picked up on the first ring.